The JavaFest: a collaborative learning technique for Java programming courses

  • Authors:

  • Matthias Hauswirth;Dmitrijs Zaparanuks;Amirhossein Malekpour;Mostafa Keikha

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Lugano Lugano, Switzerland;University of Lugano Lugano, Switzerland;University of Lugano Lugano, Switzerland;University of Lugano Lugano, Switzerland

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 6th international symposium on Principles and practice of programming in Java
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Learning to create well-designed and robust Java programs requires, besides a good understanding of the language, a significant amount of practice. In this paper we present the JavaFest, a collaborative learning technique for teaching Java to beginning programmers. A JavaFest is a group exercise that instructors can add to their repertoire of teaching techniques. It provides an opportunity for students to practice programming in a motivating but non-threatening environment, and to learn from the experience of their peers. Moreover, a JavaFest allows the instructor to gain insight into the current standing of the students in her class. We describe the concept of a JavaFest and present three case studies in the form of three concrete JavaFests we developed and evaluated in our own object-oriented programming course. The general idea of a JavaFest, and the three specific examples we describe and evaluate, can easily be adopted to enhance any Java programming course.